With a hardened, sour expression, Leland slowly raised an arm.
He slouched on a chair in the back row of the classroom, firmly believing death by firing squad was more pleasant than speaking. Dying would suck, of course, but at least it would erase him from the moment.
At least he wouldn't hit the dreaded wall again. Instead of failing once more, he would depart from the world like a gangster, known in heaven as the eighteen-year-old who got assassinated during a chemistry lesson.
Thoughts bounced around his skull.
It’s not too late. No one's seen you. Put your arm down and pray they don’t get to you in time–
No, no, no, no, you'd simply be delaying the inevitable. Just get the presentation out of the way. Besides, you got this.
Got what? Anxiety? You don't fucking got this. When have you ever got this? Put it down! Put it down, put it down, put it–
“Oh, Leland, I didn't see you there," Mr Jefferson droned. "Of course, you can go first."
Students turned their heads, staring with blank faces.
Leland stood up and swallowed hard, dragging his feet towards the front of the classroom. Beads of sweat dripped down his forehead as he leaned over the teacher’s computer. He squeezed the mouse tightly with a clammy hand.
Click, click, click. His heart thumped.
Click. click, click. The first slide showed up on the whiteboard, displaying a neat, professional background and a bold title.
Leland took a few side steps, then shuffled slightly, making sure that he wasn’t blocking the screen. Then, after clearing his throat, he opened his mouth before shutting it immediately.
Already, he had lost the battle.
A large invisible brick wall stood firm in his mind, stopping him from enunciating any sentence fluently. Already, he had passed a threshold, a point of no return, now faced with only two options. The first was to not speak. The second was to submit to the mental block. When he was much younger and more naive, he would choose the former, tending to either burst into tears or silently walk away without explanation, but now he was a little wiser.
Leland sighed. "B-Benedict's Test... i-is used to test for simple c-c-carbohydrates."
The one sentence alone was a critical hit, draining his confidence instantly. It truly was a masterpiece of a shitshow, consisting of a three-second stutter at the beginning, a whopping 10-second stutter in the middle and a two-second stutter near the end. He was shocked at how horrific it was, almost impressed.
For fifteen brutal minutes, Leland gradually went through his PowerPoint presentation, perfectly recalling every sentence while occasionally pointing to the slides on the screen. No brain function other than memory was relied upon since he had spent such an absurd amount of hours reciting his speech, allowing him to stumble through without processing any words.
He tried to fight each block initially, using all the strategies he had written in his notebook, but on the fourth slide, he completely gave up, allowing the invisible wall to slam into his face every five to six seconds. He observed the catastrophe like a first-hand eyewitness, with most of his attention drawn to every stutter rather than the concise bundles of knowledge forced out.
By the presentation's end, numerous long stutters had accumulated, leaving him slightly breathless with aching facial muscles. Worst of all, mentally, he was drained. It was only noon, yet the idea of sleep felt real good.
“Thank you, Leland,” Mr Jefferson said. “Good job.”
Good job? You’re a funny guy.
The class clapped for some bizarre reason and Leland sat back down. He massaged his jaw and sunk deep in his chair, stretching out long, muscular legs. Every graph and table had been accurately explained to the teacher, and most classmates didn't care about what he had to say, let alone how he was speaking.
But none of that mattered. He still felt like a clown. Even worse, the whole circus.
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Leland stared at the clouds while chomping down on a tuna salad sandwich. The outside canteen buzzed with chatter and occasional laughter.
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“It wasn’t that bad,” his best friend, Mark, said. “You did well. You were more fluent than usual.”
Leland only grunted in response. Since the nightmare presentation, he had been trying to limit conversations, mostly nodding or shaking his head. Usually, his stutter didn’t get him down that much, but the chemistry presentation was something he had been working on for several weeks. He had practiced and practiced, but all of the hard work was fruitless.
“Come on, don’t be like that,” Mark continued. “You probably aced it. Who cares if you stutter a bit every now and then? Everyone stutters, it’s no big deal.”
Leland quickly reached for his bag down below and pulled out a small whiteboard and a marker pen. In capital letters, he wrote:
FUCK YOU.
Mark chuckled as Leland rubbed the words off with the sleeve of his coat. He wrote again.
“EVERYONE STUTTERS? ARE YOU SERIOUSLY GOING TO ACT LIKE THEY’RE LIKE ME?”
Mark sighed. “I know, I know. It’s different. But what I’m trying to say is you don’t need to worry about it when you’re awesome, stutter or no stutter. You’re friends with me, aren’t you? That’s a big achievement, literally a medal of honour. You’re one of the cool kids. You should be proud.”
Leland smirked, shaking his head as he fidgeted in an uncomfortable aluminium chair. He looked back up and tracked the movements of a pigeon dipping and rising in the air simply because it could.
As weird as it sounded, he envied the bird.
The ignorant animal had all the freedom in the world, granted with the ability to fly in any direction it wanted. It had no restrictions. Nothing stood in its way. It flew over every obstacle effortlessly. Unlike him, nothing controlled it.
Leland couldn't recall when the stutter had begun, but he could pinpoint the precise moment when he waged war on it. On the first day of high school, the teacher called out names for the register, and when they reached him, he stuttered for over 30 seconds. Everyone stared with puzzled or amused expressions; a few students giggled, and when he finally managed to say that he was present, he felt like throwing himself off a cliff. The vivid memory was seared into his mind and still made him cringe from embarrassment. Since that day, he became much more self-aware of his stutter and the following night, while sobbing into a pillow, he vowed to conquer it.
The number of reasons why he wanted to get rid of his stutter accumulated as the years went by. At first, it was simply because it was annoying and embarrassing. He was sick of the stares, the occasional snicker, or the rare prick teasing. He hated the misconception of everyone assuming he was nervous all the time. He hated forcing out words, and the mental, and physical drain associated with it.
But nowadays, he just longed for more control–the ability to say the words in his mind the way he wanted to.
“GO TO UNIVERSITY WITH ME,” Leland scribbled.
Mark frowned. “I’m not willingly plunging myself into student debt for you. Why do you care so much? We’ll still see each other.”
“I n-need a gateway friend,” Leland mumbled.
“A what now?”
“Exactly w-what it sounds like. I need someone who i-introduces me to other friends or anyone that I want to talk to.”
“Do you hear yourself, Lee?” Mark’s eyes bulged almost comically. “You seriously want me to go to uni with you so you can make friends. You can do that without me. Stop being stupid.”
“Apart from yourself, tell m-me one friend I have m-made without your help.”
“That’s easy. Um. Huh. Wait, let me think.”
Painful silence lingered.
Mark shrugged. “Well, there’s a first time for everything. You just need to talk to people and say hi. You’re great with conversations.”
“B-but they’ll ask for my name and I’ll stutter endlessly. I a-always stutter hard with my name. B-by the time I finish it, they’re going to w-walk away from me.”
“No one will do that!” Mark snapped. “For someone who’s supposed to be an academic brainhead, you’re pretty stupid. They will wait until you’re done speaking. That’s it!”
“Yeah, and then they’ll m-mishear me and ask for my name again after I stutter for 30-plus seconds. What do I do then, M-mark, huh? That’s torture and this m-may surprise you, but I really d-don’t like torture.”
Mark facepalmed before leaning back in his chair. “Listen to me. You’re overthinking this shit. All you need to do is be yourself and you’ll be fine. You don’t need me. I am one hundred percent certain that you can make a ton of new friends in uni. And if things are really bad I’ll only be one phone call a—”
“You cheating, lying sack of shit. I knew I should never have trusted you!”
Water drizzled on Mark’s head before turning into a micro tsunami, drenching his face and school uniform.
Leland’s only visible reaction was to take another bite of his sandwich as Mark’s girlfriend, Alexa, continued to scream at the top of her lungs. “You really thought you could talk to that other bitch without me noticing? Who do you take me for?”
Mark jolted to his feet, face rapidly turning red. “What is your problem? I’m trying to help my friend here.”
“A-answer her question,” Leland said, holding a straight face.
Mark reached to grab Alexa’s shoulder, but she slapped his arm aside. “Don’t touch me!”
“You’re making a scene. Calm down.”
“Calm down?” Alexa screamed, her voice increasing in pitch. “I’m making a scene? That’s all you have to say?”
“No. You’re overreacting. You’re missing a lot of context here. ”
“Let’s go through the text messages right now in front of everyone!”
Everyone in the courtyard was looking at them. Even the supervising teacher froze mid-step, eyes filled with curiosity.
“She’s just a friend. I don’t know what else you want me to say.”
“Say nothing. You don’t need to say anything.” Alexa’s eyes welled with tears. “You’ll regret this.” She stormed off.
Leland began scribbling on his whiteboard but Mark snatched it, hurling it over five student’s heads. “What?” he growled.
“I… t-told you she was c-crazy.”